Tag Archives: Detroit

Delighted and stunned to learn that an off-the-wall-story I wrote about Detroit in the year 2099 is being featured in a collection of stories from around the world about the urban future. (The story is about how break dancing and popping can power cities as a source of renewable energy.)

I never expected this. . . Once the story is published I will share it here.

I learned this morning that my poem “Message from Bongo Brown,” will likely appear this coming week over at The Blue Nib. I welcome this news because this poem and some of its siblings, have bedevilled me. By that I mean, it has been exceedingly difficult to find a home for them.

By no means do I expect that any periodical should publish my work: that would be foolish in the extreme. What has been puzzling to me is where a writer who writes about history, socio-economic and ecological-cultural change should send his/her poetry. The market for poetry, as per my limited understanding, does not seem at all geared toward poetry of the style or substance which I find myself writing. Now, this could be the lament of someone who is simply struggling as most writers struggle; so take what I say with a grain of salt. I certainly do. But I have been searching for a proper home for a body of my work which focuses especially on the history of Detroit, Michigan. Therefore, this morning’s news was encouraging.

I had a tremendously positive experience conducting research at the Walter P. Reuther Library at Wayne State University this past Thursday.

Detroit has some tremendous educational and cultural resources, especially in/around the Wayne State campus. Not only is the glorious Detroit Institute of the Arts located there, but so is the Detroit Public Library Main Branch (built in the 1860s), the Detroit Historical Society & Museum, the Michigan Science Center, the Charles H. Wright Museum of African American History, and the libraries of Wayne State University.

This is a tremendous resource that is actually easier to get to (from London) than the museums of downtown Toronto (quicker & with better parking). I don’t know how many people know of these institutions, but I would suggest checking them out. The atmosphere around the university campus is lovely and there is good eating, too.

I was working in Detroit and when my work was finished, I decided to drive the length of Woodward Avenue from Hart Plaza all the way to 8 Mile Road, the city’s northern limit. I had never done this before and I wanted to have the experience of covering a stretch of this “All American Road,” as it is called.

There are stretches of heavy activity, especially near downtown, where the new arena for the Detroit Red Wings is being finished in time for the 2017-2018 NHL Season. And there are stretches of inactivity, of boarded up buildings, as Woodward passes through the city of Highland Park. I saw an old apartment building whose roof had caved in and whose windows were sealed with wood. I saw old stores with store fronts that looked like they were built in the 1960s but which were no longer open for business. I saw check cashing places and bail bonds establishments. I saw many people who looked out-of-work, though I cannot be sure.

Downtown I saw tourists and gilded bank buildings. I saw an expensive baseball stadium (Comerica Park) and art deco skyscrapers built when the city was flush with money. I saw the People Mover snaking its way around a small stretch of downtown -for such a big city, downtown Detroit really is small. But what I also saw were so many relics of the past, like the boarded up offices of the Michigan Chronicle, a historic African American newspaper (it is still in operation but at a new location). I also saw the renowned Cass Tech High School, one of the best technical high schools in the U.S., which has produced more than its fair share of brilliant musicians and entertainers including the inimitable Diana Ross, Lily Tomlin, Della Reese, Ellen Burstyn, Alice Coltrane and Ron Carter, to name but a few.

I saw (and felt) a great deal of history. But I also wondered, as I so often do when I am in Detroit, about the present and future. I listened to analysis over the radio of the decision to exit the Paris Climate Agreement and how General Motors and Exxon Mobil disagree with this decision. This led me back to my earlier days when I would get angry at how both companies seemed like great obstacles to meaningful steps toward a “Green Future.” And yet here I was, with the Renaissance Center (GM Headquarters) literally in my rearview mirror, listening to how the world’s largest automaker disapproves of the U.S. walking away from Paris.

I don’t thinking it is any exaggeration to say that things are changing profoundly. I don’t have to be in Detroit to feel those changes and wonder at them, but there is something about being in that city, the birthplace of the $5 daily wage, the Treaty of Detroit, Fordism and the birth of the modern middle class, to feel a sense of wonder -even foreboding- about present and future. I look at Detroit and feel both hope and hopelessness mingle . . . and then I shake it off knowing that what matters isn’t simply how we feel, but what we do now.